Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Agent that triggers immune response in plants is uncovered

08.10.2007

Although plants lack humans' T cells and other immune-function cells to signal and fight infection, scientists have known for more than 100 years that plants still somehow signal that they have been attacked in order to trigger a plantwide resistance.

Now, researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) on the Cornell campus have identified the elusive signal in the process: methyl salicylate, an aspirin-like compound that alerts a plant's immune system to shift into high gear.

This phenomenon is called systemic acquired resistance and is known to require movement of a signal from the site of infection to uninfected parts of the plant.

"By finally identifying a signal that moves from an infection site to activate defenses throughout the plant, as well as the enzymes that regulate the level of this signal, we may be in a position to alter the signal in a way that enhances a plant's ability to defend itself," said BTI senior scientist Daniel F. Klessig, an adjunct professor in plant pathology at Cornell, who conducted the work with Sang-Wook Park and other BTI colleagues.

Their approach, using gene technology to enhance plant immunity, could have wide consequences, boosting crop production and reducing pesticide use.

Methyl salicylate is a modified form of salicylic acid (SA), which has been used for centuries to relieve fever, pain and inflammation, first through the use of willow bark and, since 1889, with aspirin, still the most widely used drug worldwide.

In the 1990s, Klessig's research group reported that SA and nitric oxide are two critical defense-signaling molecules in plants, as well as playing important roles in human health. Then, in 2003 and 2005, the group reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that an enzyme, salicylic acid-binding protein 2 (SABP2), is required for systemic acquired resistance and converts methyl salicylate (which is biologically inactive as it fails to induce immune responses) into SA, which is biologically active.

After plants are attacked by a pathogen, the researchers had previously found, they produce SA at the infection site to activate their defenses. Some of the SA is converted into methyl salicylate, which can be converted back into SA by SABP2.

Using plants in which SABP2 function was either normal, turned off or mutated in the infected leaves or the upper, uninfected leaves, Klessig's group showed that SABP2 must be active in the upper, uninfected leaves for systemic acquired resistance to develop properly. By contrast, SABP2 must be inactivated in the infected leaves by binding to SA.

"This inactivation allows methyl salicylate to build up," explained Klessig. "It then flows through the phloem (or food-conducting "tubes") to the uninfected tissue, where SABP2 converts it back into active SA, which can now turn on the plant's defenses."

Klessig said that it is unclear why plants send this hormone to uninfected tissue in an inactive form, which then must be activated by removal of the methyl group.

"This research also provides insight into how a hormone like SA can actively regulate its own structure -- and thereby determine its own activity -- by controlling the responsible enzyme," noted Park, the lead author of the paper.

Die letzten 5 Focus-News des innovations-reports im Überblick:

Whether you call it effervescent, fizzy, or sparkling, carbonated water is making a comeback as a beverage. Aside from quenching thirst, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have discovered a new use for these "bubbly" concoctions that will have major impact on the manufacturer of the world's thinnest, flattest, and one most useful materials -- graphene.

As graphene's popularity grows as an advanced "wonder" material, the speed and quality at which it can be manufactured will be paramount. With that in mind,...

Physicists at the University of Bonn have managed to create optical hollows and more complex patterns into which the light of a Bose-Einstein condensate flows. The creation of such highly low-loss structures for light is a prerequisite for complex light circuits, such as for quantum information processing for a new generation of computers. The researchers are now presenting their results in the journal Nature Photonics.

Light particles (photons) occur as tiny, indivisible portions. Many thousands of these light portions can be merged to form a single super-photon if they are...

For the first time, scientists have shown that circular RNA is linked to brain function. When a RNA molecule called Cdr1as was deleted from the genome of mice, the animals had problems filtering out unnecessary information – like patients suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders.

While hundreds of circular RNAs (circRNAs) are abundant in mammalian brains, one big question has remained unanswered: What are they actually good for? In the...

A study led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg presents evidence of the coexistence of superconductivity and “charge-density-waves” in compounds of the poorly-studied family of bismuthates. This observation opens up new perspectives for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity, a topic which is at the core of condensed matter research since more than 30 years. The paper by Nicoletti et al has been published in the PNAS.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, superconductivity had been observed in some metals at temperatures only a few degrees above the absolute zero (minus...